Picture, if you will, a charming bar-room scene in the wet-season funk of Cairns, Far North Queensland. It’s January, torrid soaking heart of the Australian summer. The rains never stop. Humidity is up around 101%. Huey’s forgotten to turn the celestial taps off; fish are swimming in the shin deep swirling waters of the gutters, and the odd crocodile makes its way up from the drains into picture perfect palm-tree suburbia, lookin’ for reptilian poontang. Anyone sensible has left town. The rest are going troppo. The pub is full of the usual suspects, escapees from the human zoo – outlaw bikies, Torres Strait prawn trawler sailors drinking their months pay, transplanted Vikings, wild women, and the odd lost backpacker. The beer is going down in record time, but that’s not what they are here for. Like mighty thunder rolling east from the Mareeba delta, the music starts. It’s real gutsy, swamp-stompin’ Aussie roots music, a heady brew of original rhythm and grooves, soulful wailing out of a young cowboy, a red-bearded farm-worker straight off the banana plantation. There’s a bit of blues, a hint of wet tropics reggae, some Tablelands country twang in there somewhere, and it’s all pouring out of his guitar in some gushing torrent of raw emotion – and the punters are loving it. It’s standing room only in the hazy old blues bar tonight. With a dramatic thump, something flies from beyond the crowded pool tables in the pubs back corner, and lands at the cowboy’s feet. He finishes his solo. His guitar is smoking from the intensity of it all. Bending down to pick up the mysterious flying orb, he holds it aloft in the shine of the spotlight, haloed against the darkness. The crowd roars with recognition. He is one of their own “8 Ball” they chant. “8 Ball! 8 Ball” – and a legend is born. This is his music.
